27. Chapter 27
27
Chapter 27
Violet
I took my time walking to my room. I studied the artwork on the walls and counted every stone I stepped on in the hallway, anything to push the argument waiting for me farther into the future.
Calum had always been jealous and territorial when it came to me, even if he had no reason. One time a servant kept his gaze on me for far too long while serving dinner, and he was sent to care for the horses. Another time, while I was watching Calum train with a few young soldiers, one of them took a break and chose to spend it sitting next to me, flirting relentlessly.
I never saw him again.
This all happened years ago, and I’d like to believe he had grown out of this immaturity, especially considering the position he was in and what I had to endure every day, but Sebastian doing that in front of others, when Calum could do nothing but watch? I knew he was pissed.
“What the fuck was that?” Calum asked as soon as I shut the door behind me.
I didn’t know how long he had been here waiting for me, but by the look in his eyes and the way his hair was disheveled, it seemed like he had been here long enough to work himself up.
“I don’t know,” I said as I looked to the ground. I had an idea of what it was—and why he did it—but telling Calum any of that would do no good.
“You’re telling me he just randomly chose you, out of all of the ladies he could have, he chose you?”
That hurt. Even if he didn’t mean it like I was inferior to every other female in the room, that was how I took it.
I constantly reminded myself how less than I was to everyone around me. I didn’t need his help.
“He beds them, you know. His favorites. Are you waiting to be summoned?” he asked as he came closer to me.
“It’s not like that!” I replied, fighting back the tears.
“What else could it be? I’ve seen the way he looks at you, Violet. You are something new for him to toy with.”
I shook my head. “We have developed a friendship.”
“A-a friendship?” Calum scoffed. “When are you ever around him?”
“The night at the bar, the library, the garden,” I mumbled.
“He is an emotionless killer! You can’t have a friendship with him!” If he hadn’t placed a sound ward on my room, everyone in the castle would have heard that.
“He’s not as bad as he puts on to be,” I whispered, hoping it would bring his volume down.
“There is no way he just wants a friendship with you. He chose you as his favorite. Is that what friends do?”
“He did it to get a reaction out of you.” I couldn’t stop myself from saying it. Admitting that there may be more to Sebastian’s feelings would be far worse. Blaming it on a deep-rooted rivalry between Sovereigns seemed like the easier way out.
It was the truth, though. Even if that wasn’t the entire reason Sebastian chose me, I know he enjoyed watching Calum squirm.
“What?” he asked, confused by my confession.
“He knows. About us,” I said as I rubbed a piece of the fabric of my dress between my fingers.
“How?” he asked as his eyes widened.
“A paramic, disguised as you, lured me out of my room and tried to kill me. Sebastian saved me, but he saw what the paramic had shifted into, so he figured it out. He promised he wouldn’t tell Nathara. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he hates her and he didn’t want our secret to risk the engagement. He wants nothing more than to get rid of Nathara, so our secret is of no use to him.”
“So all this time that I thought you’ve been alone, you’ve been with him? Forming a ‘friendship,’ as you call it?” His emphasis on friendship told me nothing I had said was helping him to calm down.
“I called it a friendship because that is what it is. And I am not always with him, but why does it matter? Can I not have friends? You can spend your time with her, but I’m not allowed to have a friend because he has a penis?”
“I don’t trust him,” he replied.
“You don’t have to trust him. You have to trust me.” I placed my hand on his arm.
He clenched his jaw and had a wild look in his eyes, animalistic almost. “And if he tells you to lie down and spread your legs?”
“Are you serious? Do you think I would just submit and do whatever he says?” I asked.
“That’s what you were taught to do,” he said as he narrowed his eyes.
I slapped him in an instant. I couldn’t believe what he just said to me.
“How dare you,” I said.
He didn’t falter from my slap and deepened his gaze into mine.
“Do not be alone with him again.”
“Get out,” I said between my gritted teeth. I was so angry and hurt but I didn’t want to break down in front of him. I wasn’t backing down.
Not this time.
“As your Sovereign, I command you.”
“What is wrong with you?” I said, taking a step back from him.
“I mean it, Violet.”
“Get out!” I screamed as I shoved him in the chest.
Tears began flowing from my eyes as he transferred out of my room. I ripped my dress off and threw it on the floor before heading straight for the bed, burying myself within the blankets.
My Sovereign. Not my Calum. That was who just spoke to me.
I could feel his eyes boring holes into me the entire time I sat at the dinner table, but I couldn’t look at him. Not until he apologized for the things he had said to me last night.
I did nothing wrong.
But I also couldn’t look at Sebastian. Looking at him would add more fuel to Calum’s fire, and I just wanted it to be over with.
He was angry. I knew deep down he didn’t mean it, but he had never been good at expressing his emotions and the only way he seemed to settle things was always by enforcing his authority. He would apologize eventually. He just needed some time to cool off. We were in uncharted territory with all of this. There had never been others inserting themselves in our relationship, and we had never had the challenges we faced now.
I sat, staring at my hands in my lap while the servants came around and replaced our empty dinner plates with small plates with pieces of cake on them.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a small trail of shadows slithering towards me. Small enough that they would go unnoticed to anyone around me.
He was trying to get my attention, begging me to look at him.
But I couldn’t.
I didn’t want our friendship to end, but I also never wanted to see the side of Calum that I saw last night again.
Calum had to apologize and admit what he said was wrong. If he did, I wouldn’t see Sebastian again. Even though a little piece of my heart broke at the thought of it.
Later, I stood at my bedside table and twiddled with the small pill between my fingers—it was a constant reminder of how weak I was.
I heard a knock at my door, startling me into dropping the pill on the floor. I wasn’t used to someone knocking this late at night, only transferring unannounced. I quickly found the pill on the floor, swallowed it, and took a sip of water from the glass that sat next to the pill bottle before going to my door.
I ran through the possibilities of who it could be in my mind. Bronwen? Yara ? My father?
What I didn’t expect was to open my door and see Nathara standing there.
“Oh, um, can I help you?” I asked as I kept my grip on the door handle.
“We have some things to discuss. Can I come in?” she asked with a solemn look on her face.
I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t figure out why she would possibly need to talk to me. But I couldn’t do anything but nod and allow her entry.
I closed the door behind her and turned to see her walking around my room, inspecting every inch of it. Even picking up my bottle of pills and looking at it, confused.
“What do we need to discuss?” I asked, even though the pit in my stomach told me I didn’t want to know.
“Oh, I’m just waiting for someone to arrive before we discuss some things,” she said as she placed my bottle of pills down and brought her attention to me.
Before I could even fathom saying anything, Calum was standing between us.
“And here he is.”
Calum quickly turned around to see Nathara, realizing we weren’t alone. He glanced back at me, his eyes wide at the realization that we were fucked.
“What are you doing here?” Calum asked.
“I should ask you the same thing,” Nathara replied as she crossed her arms.
Calum and I stood in silence as we both knew there was no way out of this.
“I know about you two,” she said as she shot a look of disgust between the two of us.
“What about us?” Calum asked.
“You two have been together for years.”
My eyes widened, but I kept silent. I had no way out of this, and I knew in the end it would be me who took the blame and punishment.
“Nathara—” Calum said, walking towards her.
She took a step away from him, causing him to come to a halt. “Don’t try to talk your way out of this. Are you in love with her?”
“Of course I’m not in love with her. She is nothing but a fuck.”
That hurt. I knew it wasn’t true, and he was trying to get me out of this situation. But it still hurt.
Calum grabbed her hands in his as he said, “I’m in love with you. I am going to spend my life with you. Violet means nothing to me. She never has.”
“Prove it,” she said as she stared back at him.
He paused for a moment. “How?”
A wicked grin came across her face. “Make love to me.”
His eyes shifted towards me, and I saw a glimmer of remorse before they shifted back to her. He had no choice. The one thing he promised he wouldn’t do. The one thing that would shatter my heart into a million pieces.
“Fine. Let’s go,” he said, wrapping his arm around her.
“No—I want to do it here,” she said as she pushed his arm off of her. “You may not care about her, but I can tell by the way she looks at you that she cares about you. So I want her to watch.”
I shook my head, trying my hardest to hold back the tears. I knew there was a possibility that this would happen one day, especially knowing now that his chances out of this marriage grew slimmer by the day.
But this—having to watch—this was something I was not sure I could ever recover from.
“There’s no need for that. I think she understands,” Calum said as he looked at me again.
“I could have her killed for treason. So it’s this or death.”
I looked at Calum, hoping he could save me from this, but he was at a loss for words. There was no way out. He looked back at Nathara and began unbuttoning his shirt.
My eyes filled with tears. I squeezed them shut and tried to picture something—anything else.
“No, keep your eyes open,” Nathara said. I opened my eyes to see her smiling at me. “I don’t want you to miss this.”
I stood there, staring them down and watching them take each other’s clothes off. Every chance Calum got, he would look at me and mouth, “I’m sorry.”
They were completely naked now and all that sadness I felt was turning into rage. I wanted to rip her head off of her body.
Nathara grabbed his face and started kissing him before pulling him onto the bed with her.
All of a sudden, my eyesight started to darken, but I knew my eyes were open. I never closed them. My hearing, too, began to go away. What was happening? I couldn’t see or hear anything that was going on. Just before I truly panicked, I heard him.
Stay calm and don’t move, love. You’re still looking at that disgusting atrocity, but you’re not going to see it.
Sebastian. He was in my ear talking to me. He was protecting me. Like he always had.
I hesitated for a moment because my father had always told me to keep my mind guarded, especially around someone who had power like Sebastian, but I let my walls down to let him in so I could communicate back to him.
Why are you doing this? I said back to him in my mind.
You don’t deserve this. And I could only see two ways out of it: This or I come in there and kill them both. But if I saw them naked, I would have to take away my own eyesight.
I smiled at what he said before I quickly stopped, remembering what was happening in front of me, even if I couldn’t see it. I began to breathe heavier, thinking about the point they were currently at.
What felt like a finger caressed the small of my back. I had forgotten that in letting Sebastian in, he could hear every thought I had.
I had to take my mind elsewhere if I was to make it through this.
What were you doing before this act of chivalry intervened? I asked Sebastian.
Well, I’m currently swimming.
You like to swim? I asked. I’m not sure why, but the thought of the big bad shadow king swimming seemed funny to me.
Yes. Every night. It calms me, he said, still rubbing my back with his shadows.
I haven’t seen any body of water around the castle, I said.
I’m outside the walls. My secret place.
That sounds nice.
I thought about it. A place away from everything and everyone. Away from what was going on right now in front of me.
You’d like it. It’s a place to be alone with your thoughts.
I wish I was there right now , I said back, begging for this to be over.